Beyond Shakespeare: The Chester Plays 5 & 6 - Balaam and Balak & The Nativity

We explored these plays in a slightly fraught way this last Sunday - having been banished from our usual space to the public theatre bar - so the recording is a little more frazzled this week and, in my confusion, I make a few statements that are completely and utterly wrong - helped by the confusing nature of play five.
[The Chester recordings have now been archived and are below - I have edited out any howlers in terms of my general confusion. Credits and photos at the bottom of the post.]

Two distinctly odd plays were looked at this week, following on from the increasingly fragmented play structures of last time - where the Abraham play danced around three episodes, interspersed with exposition.
There is an important question that has to be asked about the dramaturgy - are the jump cuts between scenes and locations an artistic decision or part of the later post-reformation general buggering about of the plays - or a bizarre mixture of the two. It seems to me, as a dramatist and actor, that a lot of the material is very brief, like excerpts of a completer play - and the additions of an expositor do not aide the flow of the storytelling - in fact, it shows up how disjointed the plays seem to be. Compared with the first play - the fall of Lucifer - the following five are, increasingly, a mess. The first is self contained, clear in purpose and shows what it is about through the drama on the stage, not through exposition. The second play follows suit, but has a few odd jumps in time and hints at the truly weird storytelling of plays 4 and 5.
To add to the confusion Play 5 survives in two distinct versions (there are more than one, but only two distinct ones, as it were). I've been following one surviving text of the plays for our live explorations up to this point, but have jumped to another for this play for purely practical reasons - it's shorter and has fewer characters. This is the version which doesn't have a scene at the end with the prophets, which (again, odd chopping up of plays) is usually a play in itself in other cycles and sudo-cycles.
The prophet play is usually fairly static, a long line of prophets making prophecies about the coming Christ. It acts as a buffer between the old and New Testament sections and as almost an in breath dramatically. The audience will have had several fairly dramatic episodes so far - a nice sedate play is welcome before the action begins again. But, in the context of an already crowded and disjointed play, I wasn't sad to miss it here.
What play 5 does have is a brief Moses section, mostly speeches between Moses and God, without any of the plagues of Egypt business which we get in other plays. It is incredibly brief and almost an afterthought, as the Moses plays often feel to be. There are several reasons for this, one is the problematic relationship between the Old Testament stories and those of the New, but also practical ones. The story of Moses isn't a neat episode in itself, it's a whole mini-cycle. To make it function dramatically you need to treat it over a number of episodes. There is plenty of evidence that this was done with Abraham - for, though we are mostly familiar with the sacrifice of Issac as an episode in it's own right, the Townley Cycle continues the story onwards into two other plays. The Chester Cycle may have done something similar, even if the final texts to reach us are truncated versions of those plays. It would explain the odd structure.
But there doesn't seem to be a corresponding multi-episode Moses narrative. He's a bridge between the Old and New Testament passages, sometimes, as here, truncated with a Prophets play. And so the dramatist has to find a way to make the Moses play have enough weight in it's own right. Plus there's a question of the scale of the stories. It's easy enough to enact Moses coming down from the mountain and telling everyone about the ten commandments, it's a bitch to stage the plagues of Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea - though other cycles do have a go.
Also, there's a problem of theme. The first four plays of this cycle, except for elements of the Abraham play, all link together very well - there are the repeated themes of pride vs obedience to God's will and the prefiguring of Christ in the characters of Abel and Isaac. The Moses story, so large and so complex, doesn't fit into the template, doesn't fit into the larger story being told. And yet these halfway house plays appear, made worse in Chester by the aforementioned general buggering about with the text in the later stages of it's life. This mention of Moses feels like an appendix to me, like a cutaway of a larger play, or the insertion of a later hand with the accompanying narration by a Doctor to explain why it's there. My professional instinct, as a theatrical man, would be to cut the whole play from performance in a cycle - an instinct largely followed by every modern version of the cycles that have been staged in modern times.

Having dispensed with a brief cameo from Moses the dramatist (I should probably say dramatists) moves swiftly onto the Balaam and Balak episode, where King Balak (a heathen) calls the prophet Balaam (similarly moderately heathen) to him, for to curse the people of Israel. God tells Balaam not to go, but on he goes and on the road an Angel appears before him and the ass he is riding (no sniggering at the back there) refuses to go on. Unable to see the Angel himself, Balaam beats the ass, which is given the power of speech to remonstrate with his master.

The episode of the ass is presumably performed in a pantomime fashion and has room for physical humour - but it is incredibly brief. Balaam is allowed to see the Angel, who lets him proceed - so warned - and tells him not to say what King Balak wants. On Balaam goes to the King and they climb a mountain - the stage directions indicate it has different sides - and he is repeatedly asked to curse the people of Israel, which he refuses to do. This he does looking out at different directions on the mountain and each time the King gets more angry. Before the King gets so incensed as to do an injury to Balaam, he tells the King how to trick the Jews into wickedness and so bring their own destruction. This plan - involving collecting beautiful women to entrap the people of Israel - is explained with aplomb and seems to go down well. Re-enter Expositor to wrap things up.

There are so many questions raised by this text. How familiar was it to the medieval audience? It's immensely obscure now and I can't help but think it was even more so then - but stories go in and out of fashion and maybe it was a popular favourite? It isn't reproduced in any of the other cycles or similar that survive, but that could be due to dumb luck.
So, the story is (possibly) obscure, the staging is brief and the exposition is very long. What are the reasons for its existence? It's hardly a central part of the narrative, especially as it jockeys out space for a longer Moses play. The lengthy exposition suggests that in later years the narrative was considered very problematic.
The character of King Balak is interesting, as are the notes to business the actor would have performed; there are various references to business when he draws and sheaths his sword. He is obviously not a nice chap, but he's nowhere near to a screaming Herod, there are levels to his dialogue.
The end of the play mentions that they'll get onto the Nativity tomorrow - which is odd, as the established pattern of playing has it that plays were presented either on one day, or over three - but the established split for the three day version comes later in the cycle. Was this version of the play performed separately at some point, or were the plays performed in a completely different structure sometime in their lives? History gives no answer.

Onto play 6 and the Nativity - which is similarly a difficult text to interpret. We start off sedately enough with the annunciation.

But rather than sticking with a straightforward story of a journey and birth, the play is inter-cut with scenes involving Octavian (Augustus) Caesar and a Sybil. The purpose of Octavian in the play is not immediately apparent, but there are several good reasons for the approach. Firstly, it neatly sets the action in a world similar to ours - a ruler sets taxes, what could be more modern? This is a different world from the ancient days of the Old Testament. Octavian is an historically, as well as Bibically, extant person and it's a nice detail from the gospels to enact. The play could open with him, as a nice opening gambit, for context alone. But he doesn't appear until after the opening scenes with Mary and Joseph. A narrator - quite randomly - bursts onto the playing area almost mid action.

NUNTIUS: Make room lordings and give us way
and let Octavian come and play

and Sybil the sage that well faire may

to tell you of prophecy.

That lord that died on Good Friday

he save you all, both night and day.

Farewell lordings. I go my way,

I may no longer abide.

And off he goes again. It's somewhat bathetic - something of the Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Enter Octavian - he makes the usual boastful cries of a lesser Herod, commanding and prideful. He calls his messenger to go out and announce his new tax and (in a scene similar to the King in The Pride of Life) offers this messenger great rewards for his pains - including a woman of his choice.
The Senators then offer to make Octavian a God - and here he displays un-Herod like qualities, pointing out he is but a man and no God. But this could be strategy - as with Julius Caesar in Shakespeare's play - as he does relent to ask the Sybil first what she thinks of the idea.

So instructed, she prays.

Jump cut to Preco, the messenger, out and about - making his announcement of the new tax. Joseph hears and we remain with him. We see in the play a chain of command, from the highest in the land, eventually down to the lowest - Joseph (and Joseph, a semi-comic figure, is always pretty low, prone to self pity). This is in contrast with the earlier thread - the messenger from Rome is contrasted with Gabriel, the messenger from God.
A purpose for the secondary plot is possibly revealed. Not only have we two threads of contrasting action, between various strata of society, the dramatist can move the action along by jumping between them. Action is telescoped and scenes inter-cut swiftly. The action of the first half of the play has moved along with great speed - a brief appearance of an angel to Mary - Mary's journey to Elizabeth - somehow already visibly pregnant (for the moment Joseph appears he can see she has obviously, to him, been busy in his absence) - then, without any indication of how, the two ladies are ignored and Joseph is talking to the audience and leaving her behind - where the Angel reassures him and he returns to her. Jump-cut - and my continued analogy of film is appropriate - to Octavian and his plans for a general poll tax - this scene ends with his tax gatherer making a general speech to 'the people' - one of which is a very unhappy Joseph, who comments on the unfairness of a poll tax as opposed to an income based system.

He decides to take an ox with him to Bethlehem, so that he can sell it there to pay the tax - which is both practical and helps set up the image of the baby being laid between the ox and the ass in the stable - possibly the only account that explains how the ox came to also be in the stable in the first place.
Another interesting addition to the birth of Jesus is the appearance of two midwives - who the, somewhat feckless Joseph, rushes off to get for his wife. The birth itself is side stepped in the text as something that between two lines of dialogue just happens. No mention how - though it is suggested the midwives have little to do with it. Mary claims the birth was doubly miraculous because she felt no pain. One midwife (Tebell) praises God for the arrival of the Christ, the other (Salome) is doubtful.

Salome is punished for disbelieving that this was a virgin birth - so that when she reaches down to examine Mary's 'sex secret' (i.e. vagina - translation of the Latin courtesy of Google translate!) for proof of her virginity (as if after giving birth this will prove anything) the midwife's hand withers. An Angel then appears to explain that only by asking the baby Jesus' forgiveness does it heal. (Nobody thinks to ask if Mary wanted her 'secret sex' touched, or what she thinks - but the baby is ready to do the healing and everything turns out fine. I am reading too much into this by suggesting that the author considers a male infant more important than a woman? I know he's the baby Jesus, but come on!)

The scene breaks and there is then a lengthy story told by the expositor.

EXPOSITOR: Loe, lordings, of this miracle here

friar Bartholomew, in good manner,

beareth witness without were

as played is you beforne.

And other miracles if I may

I shall rehearse, or I go away,

that befell that ilke day

that Jesus Christ was born.

It's a story that a temple with an equestrian statue was build in Rome to honour Peace - and that the devil had a hand in its creation. The devil is asked when the temple will fall and he says (with future echoes of the prophecies of the three witches in Macbeth) that it will stand until a child is born of a virgin.

They heard and believed therefore

it should endure for evermore,

but that time that Christ was bore

it fell down soon in hie.

So giving a miracle to the birth of this particular prince.
I go into a little detail of this passage, a. because it's an interesting little story and b. because it asks an interesting question. The Expositor bridges the end of the birth of Jesus section with the final appearance of Octavian - does this mean that the Expositor moves from one space to another to draw the eye of the spectators to the next area of action, or is his appearance to allow some change of scenery in a single space. The indications of the stage craft of the first five plays is that there is room for manoevuer between a variety of playing areas - that the plays are not expected to obey strict rules of performance. There is much made of travelling between places - is this another instance?
Additionally there is the line: "beareth witness without were / as played is you beforne." Was the Expositor narrating some sort of dumb show? Should we adjust our view of the figure, which unadorned is rather dry, as a storyteller working with the rest of the team of players - rather than a jumped up know-it-all who keeps getting in the way. In the event that we get round to fully staging these plays, this is definitely an area for exploration.
Upon this note we return to Octavian who seems to go through a conversion - seeing the star of Bethlehem in the sky - which has, in a stage direction, just been displayed. As he sees the star, he has a vision.

OCTAVIAN: Ah Sybil, this is a wondrous sight

for yonder I see a maiden bright

a young child in her arms clight
a bright cross in his head.

The first reference in the plays so far to the ultimate fate of Jesus (not including Expositors or outside narrators). He then offers thanks to the new God, does a u-turn on any suggestion that as Caesar he is a God on earth and is rewarded with the singing of an Angel. He then tells his senators to spread the word of Jesus' coming. It's quite a sweet, if completely impossible, scene.
The Expositor returns to claim that a temple to Mary was dedicated at this time and is still standing to this day. This is also a bizarre nonsense.
Only one interesting anachronism of note this time - Preco, all purpose servant, announcer etc to Octavian says:

PRECO: All ready my lord, by Mahound.

Yup, that would be our first use to the corrupted name Mohammed, founder of another religion, not to be born for another six hundred years. It won't be the last time this name will be used as an oath in these plays - and by considerably worse people.
Play 6 is in many ways as confusing a text as play 5, except that on the whole, there is a far greater sense of deliberation to the structure. It isn't a matter of random scenes being strung together - there is design to the text. Whereas I could believe that play 5 is a condensed, cut down version of two or even three separate pieces, play 6 is designed as a unified whole. That said, it isn't wholly satisfying as a play. It feels cut, the scenes are very brief, the action - for all the benefits of a fast cutting structure - undeveloped.

Next time - the Shepherds and the meeting of the Magi and Herod. [This was explored at the Quay Theatre, Sudbury, two weeks later - full posting to follow.]

Exploring the Chester Mystery Plays - Plays 5 & 6 Featured Liz Cole, Robert Crighton, Michael Harding, Kevin Roychowdhury, Alan Scott and Adam Webster.
Live Streaming by Tim Regester, Autocue by Marion Tuke, photos by Mark Pavelin - with Bex Johnson in dictionary corner.